This is about my personal experience and my own interpretation of it is based on my personal opinion. Your mileage might vary. Enjoy reading - because this device is about fun.
Wait a minute...
One note before anyone complains: Yes, this is technically a device that ships proprietary software (Steam) included. So is this really FOSS hardware? I'd argue yes to some degree. Because many efforts by Valve to support this hardware went upstream to free software projects and you can easily flash/install any Linux distribution onto it, not use Steam at all and do your own thing.
Just be aware that it ships with SteamOS which isn't intended for the free software enthusiast but the average gamer.
Announcement
I still remember Valve announcing this device in June 2021. The concept was solid: A gaming handheld PC that runs a Linux based distribution out of the box allowing you to play thousands of games intended for Windows.
As someone who was playing video games for years on Archlinux with my own desktop computer, I was totally aware of Wine, Proton, Lutris, PlayOnLinux and many other workarounds to make something like this reality. Valve had started playing around with Proton, a fork of Wine designed to focus on game compatibility, on Linux to make playing games via Steam (their store) as straight forward as possible.
Around that time the Linux community had filed reports in an unofficial database (ProtonDB) to improve game compatibility for about two and a half years. Those efforts increased from maybe 6100 reports (with about 49% of the games stating reasonable compatibility via rating) to over 15000 reports (stating about 63% of the games playable).
So while many people being surprised and flashed by this new product stating it could play Windows games on Linux, I already knew for sure their promise to play most games designed for Windows was completely sound. Statistically around 2 out of 3 games should work, no matter what. Which is why I was fully on board and pre-ordered a device.
Unboxing
The device gets shipped within a solid case and a USB-C charger inside a tight box. Inside the case was the Steam Deck and a small cleaning cloth. Otherwise the whole thing is ready to use.
I personally pre-ordered the model with LCD display and 512GB of storage back then. The display panel was etched to diffuse
Setup
You start the device, select language, time zone and a wireless network to login to your Steam account. That's pretty much it. Afterwards you can download and install games from your library and play them.
If you don't have a wireless network to setup the device, I assume it should be possible to connect to a network via cable if you have an adapter or hub for USB-C.
Usage
Mostly you just play games from your library on Steam. It doesn't really matter whether it's a game intended for Windows because you have Proton. For games designed to be run on consoles, there are emulators available for Linux.
Should controls do not be configured properly out of the box, no problem because you can reconfigure all inputs per game using profiles and you essentially have one button per finger tip plus track pads, analog sticks and a gyroscope. Heck if that doesn't work, you can connect a keyboard or a gamepad via USB or Bluetooth.
Also you don't want to use Steam or its library, no issues. You can install Lutris, Heroic games launcher or other applications/games directly from Flathub. All you need to do is signing out of the Steam big picture session, logging into the KDE desktop session.
Yes, you will have access to a completely typical KDE Plasma desktop. Because why not? Every free software that's available as flatpak or AppImage can easily be installed and used.
I can also confirm that you can unlock your root filesystem from readonly to being writable and install any package via pacman from usual repository similar as on Archlinux. So that allows things like using git, installing build tools and compiling your own computer graphics applications or games for example.
Also if you are a game developer and figure that testing your game would be handy, you can install Godot and Blender on it without issues (as flatpak or even via Steam itself).
For syncing files and projects I recommend using Nextcloud. There's a client application available in the Discover store. So if you are working on a new game, it's really straight forward to make a change, sync the files and run it on your Steam Deck a few seconds later to hand it over to someone else for honest feedback. It's probably my favorite thing about it, being an all-in-one testing device for games.
Best thing is that I even told other people I know I would like to test a game they were working on with it. They only had a Windows executable. I copied it over, added it as non-Steam app to my library which allows launching it via Proton automatically setting up everything for you without manual configuration and it run as if it was native. The other person had never even tested on Linux before and was amazed seeing that.
Side notes besides gaming and all, I really tried to challenge myself to see what this thing was capable off when next to others. For example I installed EasyEffects on it and used the device as conference microphone for a voice call. It actually works quite well. You put it on a table. The microphones are quite solid and EasyEffects takes care of any distracting noice via removal filters.
Other weird thing I tried to show someone the power of free software. I sat next to them while they were trying to work with LaTeX on a MacBook. It looked painful setting up everything. So I said as a joke (at first) I would be faster getting it to work on my Steam Deck... well, I actually did. A few minutes later I was able to compile LaTeX documents into the final PDF while they were still struggling with dependencies.
I ended up trying to use the device with one of my AR glasses too. Because from some free software efforts a plugin system materialized for the Steam Big Picture mode and one of these plugins (XR Gaming Plugin) allowed using AR glasses for a 360° virtual room that gives you the option to setup a virtual display somewhere fixed in your view space like a projector area or big TV screen. So that's definitely pretty neat. Only issue I had with these plugins is that some update seemed to reset their installation or break them at some point. So it's best to remember setting it up for example using Decky Loader.
Battery life
The battery life is pretty much as advertised. Obviously it depends on what you are doing but it its big picture mode you can manually configure power boundaries to maximize battery life for a certain task.
So you can actually get between 2 and 8 hours out of it. With the addition of being able to suspend at any time, pausing whatever you are doing. I think I've never had a device giving me so little worries about suspension and resume before while being a full blown PC.
I mean if you have any single player game, even if it doesn't give you the option to pause or save, you can utilize the suspension for that - it works. You can continue your game or app later without issues as long as the battery does not fully drain. But I rarely ever forgot to charge when suspended any session.
Features
- A multi touch IPS LCD screen (1280x800) at 8:5 ratio and 60Hz (Solid for most games indoors)
- 4 core APU with hyperthreading and RDNA2 graphics that can utilize Mesa drivers with adjustable power level (4 to 15W)
- Controls: A B X Y buttons, D-pad, L & R analog triggers, L & R bumpers, View & Menu buttons, 4 x assignable grip buttons, 2 x full-size analog sticks with capacitive touch, 2 x 32.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback and 6-Axis IMU
- HD hapticks and configurable pressure sensivity
- Ambient light sensor for automatic brightness
- Bluetooth 5.0 (support for controllers, accessories and audio)
- Dual-band Wi-Fi radio, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, 2 x 2 MIMO, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
- Dual microphone array as audio input, embedded stereo speakers (with actually great sound volume) and 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
- Singular USB-C port that allows 45W charging, DisplayPort 1.4 Alt-mode and USB 3.2 Gen 2
- 40Whr battery (glued in)
- microSD card slot for storage expansion
- A carrying case comes with the device as well as a small cleaning cloth for the display
- 45W PD3.0 Type C power supply with 1.5m cable
- Very reliable suspension to pause/continue your games and power draw
- There's a handy on screen keyboard which you can make show up with a button press combination that allows you to type with both trackpads (not perfect but a usable solution)
- You have access to a wide range of plugins and customization options like custom loading sequences by the community. Feel free to hack around!
Support
In case you ever need to recover your device because you messed with system configuration details, Valve published instructions to follow installing a recovery image of SteamOS.
There's a general support page in case you have any specific issues with your hardware or the software which comes preinstalled.
Also in case you wondered how to install software packages via pacman as with any other Archlinux distribution to your system, there's a reddit thread from the community that explains required instructions to do that. Use at your own risk! But from my experience this works pretty well besides SteamOS overriding your system again during major system updates. In case you mess up anything important, try the recovery procedure.
In general if you need any software that lasts any updates, I'd recommend using flatpaks on user level. Otherwise you can still install your own choice of Linux distribution that's more open to installing software system-wide.
For game compatibility Valve has an official page where you can sign in to check whether your own game library will be playable on this device out of the box. However I personally recommend using CheckMyDeck as alternative from the community. If you profile page is public, you don't need to sign in for checking the library fast. Also it is usually rather up to date.
There can still be games on Steam which aren't marked as playable or supported that still run fine via Proton. As a rule of thumb I'd say the chance a game intended for Windows works is about 75%. Why, you'd ask? Well, I did write some custom tool to visualize the actual data from ProtonDB.
Issues
- Sometimes the device does not start (cold-boot) very fast (potentially after a previous update) and the screen stays black for quite some time. In such cases waiting for a longer amount of time usually does the trick.
- Once I tried to mess with the system configuration but ended up resetting the device using the recovery image.
- Connecting to every kind of Wi-Fi network from within the Steam Big Picture mode can be a problem because the dialogs are not fully feature complete. In such cases I recommend using the desktop session and going through KDE settings.
- The cooling fan and temperature can be a bit annoying depending on the power profile you choose. So I personally ended up capping at 11W but in many indie games I even go lower to save battery life.
Future
The Steam Deck is honestly a device that gives me big hope for the future of Linux gaming and more open hardware as well. Because it shows what modern hardware would be capable of if we don't bundle it with a proprietary operating system that controls the user instead of putting the user in control.
It also shows that even companies like Valve can utilize free software to their favor while still contributing to free software projects and supporting development across their own specific hardware. Because why would your customers dislike a product that gives them what they want and how they want it? More freedom, customization and privacy is great to offer and it's actually concerning that so many other companies have picked a different path.
So let's hope this device changes this trend and we will see a rise of more FOSS hardware that let's you utilize it how you prefer.